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Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Starfinder RPG

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Planar Adventures / Building a Planar Campaign / Alternate Cosmologies

Extraterrestrial Planes

Source Planar Adventures pg. 88
Rather than arriving through portals from other planes, outsiders hail from the depths of space, their homes far-flung planets. These outsiders are diverse, strange alien races that are genuinely physical beings that originate from bizarre worlds. Archons manifest as a race of beings devoted to implementing their own vision of benevolent order and structure upon other similarly mortal worlds, while devils oppose their archon creators as a splinter group devoted to conquest—or they could be an entirely different race of aliens from another solar system that has long fought the archons. Proteans could be serpentine beasts that swim the depths of space, delighting in the chaos and anarchy of a cosmos that predated the formation of planets and other races. Demons might be a race of bloodthirsty, starfaring marauders that come from worlds that have been destroyed, while inevitables could be a robotic species devoted to ensuring the lawful progression of the cosmos as given to them by their long-absent original creators.

Souls in such a cosmology may hail not from the Positive Energy Plane but from a vast and distant cosmic phenomenon linked to the birth of the cosmos that still sheds souls into creation. Similar to the cycle of mortal souls in the Great Beyond, souls migrate from this point and filter out to a myriad of worlds around a multitude of stars. The role of the Negative Energy Plane might then be filled by vast black holes that churn at the fringe of the universe, with ghosts, ghouls, and other undead drawing their power from these immense, haunted stars.

Upon death, rather than migrating to the realms of gods or alignment-based planes to receive their final reward or punishment, souls would instead travel to the planet or solar system claimed by their god or roam elsewhere to join those beings who were most metaphysically associated with their actions and beliefs in life. A chaotic neutral woman with no religious beliefs might die only to reopen her eyes and find herself swimming through deep space, reborn as a protean amid a chorus of her kind. By contrast, a penitent man with deep belief in his goddess might die and awaken as a petitioner at her feet, staring up at a sky with alien stars—only to dwell physically there with her for eternity.

In this cosmology, the gods might simply be ultrapowerful aliens who rule planets or entire solar systems reserved for the souls of their followers, who remain protected from the dangers and terrors between the stars for the rest of their eternal existence. Faith in these entities that dwell in a physical location rather than an unreachable plane might prove less fervent, or their proximity could make devotion stronger, even allowing for commonplace divine contact— unless the gods united in forbidding it.